Random Musings

Honor the Giver

When
I graduated into the “real world”, I had spent 12 years in Catholic schools and
was well indoctrinated. Although I think I got a great education, I’m not sure
adding religion into the mix is a good idea. Two concepts that were front and
center were:

The
idea that physical pleasure that came from activities not designed to produce a
baby were evil and a sin.

In
all things moral and spiritual, the Catholic church was right and disagreement
was not an option.

As a gay guy, I saw no fertile fields for my seed in the
foreseeable future and my options were bleak. Celibate or sinner. The only guys
I knew that were celibate were priests and they got some special hocus pocus
from God to keep them that way. Since
then, we’ve seen how well that turned out.

Slowly at first, I began questioning what I had been taught. On our tenth anniversary,
my husband and I asked a priest if he would come to our home and give us a
blessing. We knew him because he was always in gay bars and we would occasionally
run into him. He explained that the church would not allow him to bless us
because of being gay but he could bless our house. We said ok.
Today I’d tell him to get the hell out of our house.

I’m not trying to single out the Catholic Church because all churches have
their individual idiosyncrasies:

Southern Baptist Convention – Broke away from
the Baptist Church in 1845 to be pro-slavery and were a driving force behind Jim
Crow laws. In 1995, the Convention
apologized for their pro-slavery positions.
For white supremacists who may have been offended by this apology, take
heart. Just for you they doubled down on
homophobia and sexism. Not to be outdone
by the Catholics, a huge sex abuse scandal has recently been uncovered.

In
the Mormon Church, whenever one of their guiding principals becomes unpopular, a
cooperative God will give one of the twelve church Elders a vision that immediately
becomes church doctrine. In 1978,
because of one of these visions, Black men went from having the Curse of Cain
and very limited membership in the church to being eligible to be priests and admission
to the temple in Salt Lake.

“Evangelical”
Christians are just a puzzle. Their belief
in the Bible as a historical document at the expense of science – ignoring the
reality it was passed down for a millennium by story tellers before being
written – is a testament to their blind faith.
However, their actions seem contradictory. Bill Clinton was discovered to have had a
marital infidelity and, as a group, they called for his head and impeachment. Donald Trump has been discovered to be a man whore
with three different wives and this same group says it’s a private matter and
is none of their business. How about some
children being taken from their parents and others put in cages? They support the person responsible? Where is this behavior found in scripture?

I
started becoming more aware of gifts I have received such has the ability to
tell right from wrong, a brain that can think for me and my own moral
compass. In my youth I had allowed my
religion to perform these roles without question instead of using the gifts God
gave me and it brought up uncomfortable questions.

If
God created me and God doesn’t create junk, how can I be an abomination?

The
greatest gift God has given me has been the love of my life and husband of over
40 years. How can a gift from God be evil?

How
can a church hierarchy made up of men who don’t have sex (supposedly) be taken
seriously as the source of sexual morality?

We
are all imperfect beings. How is it
possible for any human being or organization of humans to be incapable of
making mistakes?

If
God’s judgement is the one we need to be conscious of, who are all these people
who claim the authority to judge me and other people?

It’s
taken a very long time but my beliefs are very different now than they were when
I left parochial school. I am a much happier man and have maintained my
faith despite the obstacles. I said all of
that to get to a point.

I
look at things now as gifts from the Big Guy.
I think it’s non-controversial to say that sexual pleasure is a
gift. As I said earlier, men who supposedly
don’t have sex set the rules telling us the only time we are allowed to experience
that pleasure is when making a baby. Is it
possible they’re jealous and want to throw a little guilt into the mix? You use birth control? No pleasure for you. You are not medically capable of creating a
baby? No pleasure for you. You’ve passed menopause? Forget it.
Gay? Get real. How about masturbation? No pleasure for you – that’s what wet dreams
are for.

It
seems to be that if God gives me a gift, I should celebrate it, enjoy it and be
in a state of gratitude for it. If
adults are responsible when using this gift, they are showing God their
appreciation. If you are given a gift by
God and you intentionally ignore that gift, it sure seems like disrespecting the
gift giver.